Brussels, 03/01/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission has released Unisource, the telecommunications alliance between KPN (the Netherlands), Telia (Sweden) and Swisscom (Switzerland) of its reporting obligations following the Commission's exemption of the operation in 1997. The reporting requirements were similar to those which the Commission had imposed in the earlier telecommunications alliance between France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, Atlas. In both cases, the requirements aimed at preventing the parent companies, which initially still held monopolies in their respective home markets, from favouring their joint venture companies and thereby putting competing companies at a disadvantage.
The European Commission decided to release Unisource from its reporting obligations after the company decided to substantially reduce the scope of activities of their joint venture which now only provides value-added services to multinational companies. This activity has a market share of between 4% and 11%. The parent companies have also repealed both the non-compete clauses which prevented the parent companies from competing with Unisource and the exclusive dealing arrangements. Given these changes, the parties asked for a review of the 1997 decision, in particular to be relieved of the extensive conditions and reporting requirements which were imposed as part of the exemption decision. The Commission therefore repealed the 1997 exemption decision and replaced it with a negative clearance decision, which can only be modified by means of a new decision.